And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

It’s late at night. The men are working, hefting buckets of water from one water-butt to another. One man thinks he hears something in the hold — sleeping men as yet unaccounted for on deck. Who could they be? The man mentions his hearing of a cough below. His crew mate replies, “Cough be damned! Pass along that return bucket.”

Besides being a really great piece of foreshadowing, I like “Hark!” because it accounts for how all the ridiculous and extreme happenings on the Pequod could for the crew add up to little more than anxiety, superstition, and gossip. Why are these men not demanding full disclosure from all involved? For one, they’re being worked to the bone, and they don’t have time to humor speculation. On top of that, they’re so used to gossip from their crew mates that they don’t believe the half of it. Most of all, the men live in a power structure in which they are scared to trod too heavily above the officers’ quarters, let alone to ask questions.

“Hey now, comrade, something is coming our way!”
“Keep your mind on the task at hand, or be gone!”
In labor we were silenced all along.
“The captain sleeps below us, so be what you be.”
In deference, we change the truth that we see.
The ocean’s rolling!